SPORTS TALK: Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski are having more fun than you right now

Sue Richards and Barry Maddox are a British couple who won £3 million on an instant-win scratch ticket (I wish) and decided to celebrate in the way you probably would if you won that much. Maddox went ahead and mowed an image of a popped bottle of champagne with glasses into their lawn. Maddox told Sky News that it took three days to mow the lawn just right and green-thumbing is actually a hobby of his. We all need one, right?

I don’t know about you but the sight of Rob Gronkowski with a fully-automatic minigun isn’t one I’m a big fan of. photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

On now to other things people with money do, like going ham with automatic weapons.

You call that a gun?

Rob Gronkowski skipped the voluntary off-season workouts with the New England Patriots and depending on who you talk to, he had good reason to do so.

Gronk is getting set to appear in an action movie called Boss Level starring Mel Gibson and Naomi Watts and he was preparing for his part…by letting loose with a fully-automatic minigun. No joke – Gronkowski is seen on a video just giving it under the watchful eye of two munitions experts but seeing how this piece of equipment works would give anyone some second thoughts.

For example, if you watch the video, take a look at Gronk’s face. He’s right into it. Second, he’s wearing shorts and Air Jordans. That’s relaxed right there. Finally, look at the spent shell casings that surround – and I mean surround – Gronk’s feet. That is a weapon of war.

Not to be outdone, Tom Brady was busy letting enemies of the U.S. know how he felt about them by signing munitions. It’s hard to know when he signed the bombs, which could one day be dropped from fighter planes, but he did recently make a trip to Qatar to visit American troops stationed there and that’s where it was most likely done.

Now, depending on what your opinion of Brady may be, you’re probably hoping he would strap himself to one of them just like Major T.J. Kong did in Dr. Strangelove. It would be the most accurate bomb ever dropped and piss off everyone who hates Tom Brady.

Now what, Toronto?

This was supposed to be the year the Toronto Raptors did the business against the Cleveland Cavaliers but it ended up with the Raps looking like wet paper bags against Bron Bron and Co.

The Raptors, with their first seed in the NBA’s Eastern Conference and their 59 wins, were dispatched in short order by the Cavaliers in rather humiliating fashion on May 7, the second year in a row the Cavaliers have done them in with the minimum requisite of four games at the conference semifinal stage.

So now what? What do the Raptors do? It’s become painfully obvious that they have become the NBA’s version of the Ottawa Senators in that they can’t take down the one team standing in their way. The Senators have the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Raptors have the Cavaliers.

The obvious choice is a change at the head coaching position. No one will deny that Dwane Casey hasn’t done a masterful job with the Raptors in seven season. He’s taken a team that was left for dead and made them a force. But even great coaches know that it doesn’t always work out and maybe a new voice is needed in the locker room.

Jerry Stackhouse is coaching the Raptors’ G-League team, Raptors 905, and would be a good option to fill Casey’s shoes, if general manager Masai Ujiri decides that’s the way to go. There’s also the matter of DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka. Those three make an awfully large chunk of money and that’s another place Ujiri will have to look at.

Either way, there’s still a missing piece for the Raptors and they haven’t yet found it.

Just bite it off

Is there much difference between Brad Marchand and Luis Suarez? Not really – both use their mouths to piss people off.

Marchand, though, really needs to stop all of this kissing and licking of opposing players because it’s just gross. I know why he’s doing it and he loves it when players and people react to it but he’s going to do it to the wrong person one day. You all recall what happened to Harvey the Hound when he got too close to Craig MacTavish one night in Calgary?

Marchand and his Boston Bruins are out of the NHL playoffs after being beat by Tampa Bay and he had the perfect trolling sign-off on his Twitter feed: a kiss-blowing emoji.

And finally …

Good Idea: Arguing an obvious bad strike call.

Bad Idea: Drawing lines in the dirt after an obvious bad strike call.

There isn’t an umpire in the world that will stand for a baseball player playing Etch-A-Sketch around home plate after what they felt was a pitch that was inside or outside. I won’t.

Nicholas Gargan, who plays with the Midville Dodgers of the Long Island Men’s Baseball League, found out the hard way earlier this month when he decided to let the umpire know how he felt about his strike call, which admittedly wasn’t exactly close. He drew a line on the outer half of home plate and that got him run from the game.

Now, people have been saying he got tossed for arguing the call but that’s not why. He got gunned because he drew the line and the umpire even told him so. Umpires take crap about the strike zone all game long but the one thing they won’t put up with is being shown up. If Gargan had simply said a few words, he would have been in the game and that would have been that.

Of course, Gargan felt it was the bat’s fault and did a Bo Jackson on his lumber after getting the shower. Watch the video if you’d like a crash course on how not to deal with a strike call, good or bad.